The businesses in the world that have strong branding are instantly recognisable without even using their logo. Branding can consist of a colour palette, typography, photography and much more that combine to give your business a unique look and feel. Most startup companies neglect branding, opting to make a quick logo on Canva or some other free to use app. Without any design experience the logo most likely will look amateur and this is unfortunately the image you’re projecting to the public.

In my opinion you could get away with a poor logo before the digital age because it was not as exposed as now. For example if you needed a plumber you’d check the yellow pages and pick one of the top ones or go on word of mouth. Now as consumers we scan the internet relentlessly stalking each website to find one that appeals to us the most. 

I personally always opt for the businesses with the best branding and most easy to use website and this isn’t just because I’m a designer and appreciate aesthetics it’s because I feel the companies with the best branding and website are the most active and competent at what they do and I believe other people especially the younger generations are the same. 

The statistic above from Forbes proves that your presence and look online can definitely influence your customers and convince more to choose you. Having strong branding and being active on all platforms with a clear identity makes people think you know what you’re doing and you appear more competent and trustworthy to potential customers. 

If you do opt for a rebrand or brand refresh with a design agency all good agencies will supply you with a brand guidelines document that basically acts as an instruction manual to keep your brand consistent through all platforms so you don’t necessarily need a full-time experienced designer at hand 24/7 although it does help massively.

Most of the blog has been about the importance of visual branding but branding is also about your values and tone of voice too. As a business you should be well aware of who your target audience is and hopefully you have an understanding of the values that set you apart from your competitors. Branding is a way of ensuring that’s visible to your customers so you can build a bigger audience. You could create this visually or communicate with your customers in a specific tone of voice and make this consistent throughout your business.

It’s hard to condense the importance or even the concept of branding into one blog post but here’s a brief look at branding's importance and hopefully you will have learnt something from this post. To end this post I’d like to leave you with some other interesting facts and statistics surrounding branding.

• 94% of people said they’d be highly likely to recommend a brand they were emotionally engaged with.
  
  
• Brands that blog generate 67% more leads.
  
  
• Over 70% of brand managers consider building an audience more important than converting sales.
  
  
• Social media (47%), company career website (21%), and marketing and advertising (12%) are the top three investments for growing an employer brand.
  
  
• The top 4 qualities people use to describe why they are loyal to a brand are cost, quality, experience, and consistency.
  
  
• 10 seconds are enough for people to form an opinion about a logo.